


Five Loves of a Hogwarts Founder and The One That Was Unwise

by Plant_Murderer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hogwarts Founders Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plant_Murderer/pseuds/Plant_Murderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the loves (platonic and romantic... more platonic than romantic really) that shaped Rowena Ravenclaw over the course of her life. Includes scenes from the early years of Hogwarts. </p>
<p>(tags to be be updated when new chapters are added)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lady Hufflepuff

1 . Lady Hufflepuff had always told Rowena and Helga, “There is a particular way that everything wants to be seen”. Rowena listened, and took it to heart even when she was very small. All things, according to the Helga’s mother, had their ways of expressing themselves and striving to be understood. It took a keen eye, a generous spirit, and a particular sort of cleverness to find the heart of something, the true nature that it tried to make known, and to show it to the world.

     Of the three things, two came naturally to Rowena. Her dark eyes had been in motion from the first moment of her life. The world was a puzzle box, and with the right motion, or touch, or word, she could and did unlock her mother’s smile, the meanings in foreign phrases, or the admiration of her older brothers. If life had compartments that she had yet to unlock, if her father’s notice or the purposeful working of magic still eluded her, then the keys would come in time and with proper study. Generosity of spirit would come too and by the happiest of chances, in that at least, she had teachers who were wonderfully practical in their methods.

     Lady Hufflepuff came with her husband, daughter, and attendants every fall. The woman had been friends with Rowena’s mother, Lady Ravenclaw, when they’d been girls and living just a few miles apart. They’d been inseparable until Lady Hufflepuff’s family left, venturing forth to make a new home in a place where more of their kind had gathered. It had been many years since then, but love remained between them. In honor of that love and in the wish that their daughters should carry it forward, every fall, as the air began to cool and the leaves turned, when the magic of the world seemed to blow in the wind, they would come.

     They flew in by night in carriages pulled by winged horses, landing on a vast hilltop at the edge of the Ravenclaw family lands. It was safe and far from prying eyes, being protected on one side by a deep and dark forest, and on the other by a lake. The hilltop bore the ruins of a castle; the largest bit of which that still stood was a keep that had once safeguarded Rowena’s ancestors. The old stones whispered and the wooden beams creaked. In the language of very old buildings, they told Rowena stories that she saved up to tell Helga or whispered back to the walls on nights when they seemed particularly lonely.  
For no less than a month every year, Lady Ravenclaw would take Rowena, her three brothers, and several members of the staff to bring life back to the old keep, and to hear the news and lessons that Lady Hufflepuff would bring. Along with the news, came stories of a world where whole cities of their kind lived together, spell books for Rowena’s mother and brothers, and lessons, in how to see things as they wanted to be seen.  
  
     It was during an evening near the end of one such month, when Rowena was no more than ten years old, that she learned something that she would carry with her for the rest of her long and storied life.  
All day, Rowena and Helga had been engaged in the same sort of studies that Rowena undertook year round, learning language, history, and natural science. They’d walked down to the lake with Rowena’s eldest brother and been instructed in the plants and animals to be found there. Rowena had given their names in several languages, while Helga had talked about how they were used, and what it would take to grow them in a garden. They’d been diligent in their studies, but each girl had waited eagerly for nightfall, and the warm time after dinner when they could sit at last with their mothers in the smoky warmth beside the fire and listen to Lady Hufflepuff’s stories. The time had come reliably during every evening the girls had passed together for as long Rowena could remember, so when the meal was done, and the fire was put out by a servant, Rowena was confused.  
  
     “Come, young witches,” Rowena’s mother called. She was standing in a doorway that led outside and the moonlight at her back hid her face. Rowena reached for Helga’s hand and found her reaching back. Taking it in her own, she stood and they walked outside, followed by Lady Hufflepuff. Behind them, Rowena thought that she heard the fire start up again, but she didn’t dare look back.  
Outside beneath the stars, Lady Hufflepuff moved to kneel in front of them. She was a plump woman with a smile that was sun warm whatever the time or season. The soft green cloak and brown dress that she wore pooled on the ground around her. She seemed a planted and growing thing, and a magical one, with the light of the stars in her dark hair.  
  
     “Take care,” Lady Hufflepuff said to Helga and Rowena, her voice low and steady as she put a gentle hand on one of each of their shoulders, “for it is time that I told you the one true secret behind all magic, passed down from witches whose bones were dust before Merlin ever drew breath. Are you ready?”  
  
     Lady Ravenclaw and a pair of older servants nearby hid smiles as the girls, enchanted by the prospect of an ancient secret, nodded and then seemed to sit up straighter. Helga smiled more widely as Rowena made her face carefully blank. Each a caricature of their mother, as they tried to seem old enough to be entrusted with the knowledge.  
  
     “Such bold young witches! Perfect! The holders of such a secret _should_ be bold.” She leaned in and kissed their foreheads before saying, “Everything wants to be known in a particular way. Magic is about finding the way to express a thing, to show or tell it as it wants to be told. This is true even if you would never tell it aloud, even if it is a secret that you would keep with you into the next world, and the only person you show it to is yourself.  If you find the heart of anything - of an action, of a flower, of a person, anything- and if you work with it to find how it would be known and seen? You can do wonders. If you can find what is at the heart of your own being, and at the hearts of those you love, you will find that your lives will be quite wonderful indeed.”  
  
     Lady Hufflepuff pulled the girls in and held them to her chest for a long moment before saying, “My girls, our girls, the time has come to grant you the power to use the words and the spirits at the hearts of things to begin to craft wonders of your own. A wandmaker of great repute waits to aid two of his creations in making better choices in owners than many ever will. With any luck, you’ll have wands before the snow falls.”  
  
     Lady Ravenclaw came up behind the girls and lay her hands over Lady Hufflepuffs’, before guiding her youngest child backwards and into her arms.  
  
     “With still more luck, by years’ end you will forgive me for keeping this from you, Rowena.” Lady Ravenclaw said, “You are to pass the next year with Helga and her mother, to learn what you may and to meet some new witches and wizards. When you all return, next fall we shall see if you are to go and stay for another.”  
  
     Rowena turned in her mother’s arms, wide eyed and reeling at the news even as Helga exclaimed her joy. She felt her heart pulled in more directions than she’d known it could go and turned helpless eyes on her mother, and then on Lady Hufflepuff. Around them, stones and bits of grass and plants rose up and began spinning in time with the thoughts that whirled through Rowena’s mind. Lady Ravenclaw froze, empathy with her daughter slowing her response. Nothing that she could do seemed likely to calm Rowena and the plans were too far along to be undone.  
  
     Lady Hufflepuff took the girl back into her arms and Helga, in a move she’d learned years before, distracted her friend with a question.  
  
     “If that’s the secret behind all magic, what do spells do?”  
  
     This stopped Rowena mid thought, and redirected her focus for long enough to make things stop spinning, and fall harmlessly to the ground as Rowena said, “They express the true nature of things? How?”  
  
     “Very good questions. Let’s get inside, and I will answer with a story,” Lady Hufflepuff said, releasing Rowena. Helga steadied her with a hand on her arm as the older women stood. Lady Ravenclaw took her daughter’s other hand, holding almost too tightly as they made their way inside.  
  
     Rowena looked at the faces of her siblings as they entered and knew instantly that they knew. They crowded around her as she settled in front of the fireplace. No one mentioned Rowena’s father, who’d long since dismissed their yearly meeting a women’s trifle and beneath his concern, and who’d not stirred from his desk to see them off. No one mentioned the four short days remaining before Rowena would leave with the Hufflepuffs and their retainers. They only pressed close and listened to the story of the first spell, and then to the sounds of the stones and beams, as they whispered what Rowena realized might be a thousand little partings.  
  
     Goodnight, goodbye, remember, they told her, swift winds and calm seas, come back.  
  
     Rowena walked out into the cold night, leaving the warmth of the bed that she shared with Helga and walked outside to get away from the words. It was dark, and with the new knowledge fresh in her mind she thought on light. She studied on it for a long time, remembering every light that she could think on and wondering what its heart could be. She sat on the grass not far from the door and closed her eyes in thought.  
  
     “Give it a look, Love,” Lady Hufflepuff said, and Rowena hadn’t heard her coming but when she opened her eyes to see her she was distracted. She was glowing, casting a pale white light. From the top of her head to the soles of her feet, Rowena was glowing. She’d done magic on purpose. The glow went out as she turned to face the older woman, but she felt the soft fabric of the cloak wrap around her, and the kiss on her forehead. She felt tired. She leaned against Lady Hufflepuff and fell asleep.  
  
     Years later, a lifetime later, Rowena wondered if she could possibly have loved Lady Hufflepuff as much as she recalled. She wondered if perhaps she’d loved learning, or magic, or the keep, so much that her heart did not break to leave her entire world with only four days notice, and had only loved her aunt-in-practice an amount that was reasonable and which could be accounted for. On the night she learned the secret of magic though, all of those loves were one. Youth is not without wisdom, she realized in the end, no more so than love is, and the admittedly silly question was put to rest.


	2. Helga




Helga was late. They all were, Rowena noted, but she had known Helga the longest and had trusted her the most, and had seen her just the other day, why hadn’t she arrived?

At least the keep was still standing. It had not been a certain thing. The place had been ancient when she was a child, and ten years had come and gone since the last time she’d spent a month there with her family. It was some fifteen years more than that since she’d left for the first time in the carriages drawn by winged horses with her friend. By some powers that she understood, and by many that she did not, she and the keep were still standing. It seemed, if not a good omen, at the least a hopeful lack of a bad one given the meeting that she had planned.

A tremendous blast of sound and light announced the beginning of that meeting. Rowena turned and greeted Helga  in the manner of most friends who have long since done away with formalities.  

“They’re not here yet!” Rowena announced.

“Your manners?” Helga asked, dusting herself off and stepping over one of the trunks at her feet, “If you’ve not found them in all of your wanderings and researching, I fear that they might be something of a lost cause.”

“We agreed on the day and the hour,” Rowena said, staring around as if willing them to appear.

“Knowing Gryffindor, he’ll have decided to fight his way through the forest rather than use your traveling spell,” Helga said with laugh.

“Only half the forest, I’ll have you know,” Gryffindor called as he ran up from the tree line and appeared in gap in the outer walls He stopped as he came within sight of the keep and stared it.

 “You expect us to start a school in that?” He blurted.

A sound near the lake spared Rowena the trouble of answering, and the three went down to meet with Slytherin. He was looking with optimism on the suggested location for the school, though he too stopped short at the sight of the structure, surrounded as it was by half buried rubble and ivy strewn walls.

“I expect that we’ll make it a touch bigger,” Helga said, “In the meantime, I’ve brought food.”

Rowena grinned at the bemusement on the wizards’ faces and waved them all into the building.

Helga started a fire in the fireplace, her alder wand appearing in her hand with a speed that might do credit to a master duelist. 

Rowena smiled, freeing her own wand from an enchanted sheath hidden in her sleeve. It was slightly longer than Helga’s and made of beech with a sphinx hair core. The core was a rare one, as sphinxes were discerning creatures and a hair not given freely would be stained by the theft. The wandmaker had been skeptical, but his creation had served her well. She raised it and lit the sconces along the walls, before murmuring another quick charm to air out the main room. 

Helga flicked her wand in the direction of the door, and her bags came floating in, one of which deposited itself onto the table. Rowena waved her wand at it and the parcels of bread and delicacies from Helga’s garden arranged themselves on the table, an array of wooden bowls, platters, and flagons.

Helga said something under her breath, and soon the foods meant to be served warm were steaming as the salad and drinks chilled. Rowena took a parcel of plates and utensils from a bag and set them on a corner of the table, and then both women turned to see Slytherin and Gryffindor watching them. 

The latter was grinning and stepped forward to fill a plate, but Slytherin raised an eyebrow.

“I had known that you were well acquainted,” he said, “but to see it is something else. Do you cast so seamlessly together in other circumstances?”

The women glanced towards each other.

Shared glances between very old friends are a magic that has never been entirely studied. Those who know of it know it fully and those who do not never guess at its power.  It is a magic of time and memory, and in that moment, it took both women back years.

They relived springs and summers of learning magic side by side. They went their separate ways as the girls that they’d been became women with very different ideas about how best to serve the world, but always Helga made room in her home for Rowena. Always Rowena brought back not just spells and scrolls, but seeds and live clippings for the Hufflepuff gardens. On the not entirely rare days when Helga ventured off on trips of her own, Rowena watered and weeded or saw to it that someone else did.

 On occasion they even went off together.  Once, Rowena was tasked with removing some pests from a garden and had asked Helga for assistance. They assumed gnomes, or pixies at the worst. They  assumed wrong.

They moved back to back, wands raised and the air crackling with power as they fought the pair of dragons that had taken up residence in an old wizard’ garden. Their bat-like wings and coloring marked them as Hebridean Blacks, several of which strayed from their usual hatching grounds during the extraordinarily long winter. Helga and Rowena had fought for over a day, sometimes teaching each other spells as they went. They nearly met their ends together but Helga, who was every bit the witch that her mother had been, began to chant a new spell.

She told the story of the battle in a mix of languages, switching to match whatever felt right. She told of other battles, of fire and killing, of the shine of wet scales in the sun and purple eyes, splashed with red and burning sweetly. Rowena joined in. She told of space and freedom, of eggs laid and left to grow untended and wild, and the thrill of wind and sky and of the closeness of stars. They told the dragons’ hearts, and then told them to seek peace.

Gryffindor, who’d heard that two women who might well be _that_ Rowena Ravenclaw and _that very_ Helga Hufflepuff  were facing dragons, came riding up as the dragons left, and  tried to be helpful, tossing hexes at their backs.  It was how they’d met him, and might well have been why they’d killed him if either dragon had taken offense and turned around. 

Rowena and Helga relived the days after that, held up in the large house that Rowena’s mother had given her when she’d chosen to leave the family home and start her adventures.  They’d rested and worked to heal each others’ burns and scrapes before joining their families at the keep.

This and more history passed through and between them in a glance, but all that Helga said when she returned to the present moment only a second after the pair had left it was a fond,  “Yes, it’s been known to happen.”

Gryffindor, who’d seen more than either witch was aware of on the day that he’d met them, burst out laughing.

“Salazar!” he cried. “Surely you must have heard the tale?”

Slytherin looked to the women, assessing before he replied, “Not from the source.”

“I was there,” Gryffindor argued.

“For the end,” Rowena said mildly. “If Lord Slytherin wishes to hear it from the beginning, we could discuss it while we eat.”

“I would be honored to hear it,” Slytherin said, “and doubly honored if you would call me Salazar.”

“Then I shall be Rowena, and may the honor be no less for being shared,” she replied. He smiled and she was struck by the difference it made in his face. He was not, perhaps, conventionally attractive but in the soft light of the fire his grey eyes drew her in. Pushing the observation aside, she started to tell the story.

“There was, not very many years ago, a very old wizard who hated his brothers’ children very much,” she began.  She went on to explain that his nephews and nieces stood to inherit most of their family’s wealth, and that the only thing he could do to lessen their fortune was to cheapen the spells the family had made and hoarded by spreading them around to everyone.  Of course Rowena could put the spells in her book and teach them to others! All he asked in return was a bit of help with some unwanted guests.

It was a good story, and interruptions and interjections made it a long one, so when they finally got started planning, it was dark out and they sat before the fire.

“What will we need?” Salazar asked. “We’d best settle on that before we get too far along.”

“We know that already,” Helga countered. “Classrooms, places for students to live, a means of feeding them. The real question is ‘how many will we need it for’ or perhaps ‘where do we start’.”

Salazar looked at her for a moment before waving his hand in a silent invitation to proceed.

“We’re sitting in the start,” Helga told them. “However many students we have, they’ll need a warm, dry place to gather, eat, and sleep. I was joking before, but if we made this bigger it could be our school, at least for a time.”

“We’ll need wizards and witches with knowledge of building,” Rowena mused. “I’ve never done more than the spells to help fortify what’s here.”

“And wizards with knowledge of teaching?” Salazar asked wryly.

“We’re none of us wholly self taught,” Rowena said. “So we all know something of how it’s done. It won’t be easy, but we can choose students who will want to learn and start with just a few.”

“More than a few,” Gryffindor argued. “If we choose older students, ones who’ve seen and done a bit they won’t need as much minding, and they’ll see the use in what they’re learning.”

The conversation continued long into the night. In the end they decided to seek out others with the skills that they’d need and to begin spreading the rumor that a school was in the works. Once they had the first large room in place, the four of them would journey together and seek out their first group of students.

Godric and Salazar retired to another part of the keep, but Helga and Rowena stayed in the large main room. Rowena listened to the building whisper and felt a sudden and profound loss as an awful truth settled in her mind. There was only so much space on the hilltop. The keep would likely have to come down to allow for new building.

“Helga?” Rowena called out. Her friend was lying in a bed that she’d conjured and moved closer to the fire. Rowena had set her bed near the opposing wall, to hear better. When Helga didn’t respond, Rowena crossed the room and stood beside her bed till Helga raised a corner of her sheet in invitation. Climbing into the bed she continued, “I was thinking…”

“Yes?” 

“Do we have to knock this down?” Rowena asked. She pressed her forehead into Helga’s back, feeling too old to be making the gesture, but too vulnerable to deny herself. “Can we not simply let this stay here? Put it to some use, or let it fade into nothing like the rest of the fortress?”

“Oh, Rowena, sister mine,” Helga soothed, turning over, wrapping a warm arm around her, and resting her chin on Rowena’s head. She closed her eyes and whispered, “The keep will be kept. I keep a clever, daft little witch who tells stories about talking walls, you know. She is in you and in me, whatever else life has added or taken away. These will be our school’s cornerstones. They will not fail, or fade, or die.”

“Do you promise me that?” Rowena asked, tense with need for certainty and the specific sort of fear that precedes hope.

“Yes. There’s old magic in these stones, Rowena,” Helga said. “You know their hearts. I think that you’ll be able to do things with them that no one else could presume to try. I promise to help them see that. I promise I wouldn’t change this place for anything less.”

Rowena nodded her understanding, and listened for some sign from the stones. What she heard instead were footsteps and when she looked up she saw Salazar slipping away, wandering back down the narrow hall. He had heard and seen and she wasn’t altogether sure how to feel about that but, if their plans came to fruition, they would soon be living in close quarters. She resolved to observe him in return. She’d feel better once she knew more, she always did. 

When they left the keep the next morning, Rowena lingered the longest. She sat with her back to a wall. Her eyes were closed, her hands clenched, even as she daydreamed aloud to the stones, telling them about what they would be in time. She called them “school” and she tried to accept the risk that she was taking in moving to alter a place that she loved, in sharing it. Generosity of spirit still took effort, and she’d strived for years to make it habit but her results had been limited. She struggled to loosen her grip, to open her heart to the gift that she might be giving to the world.

There was the sound of someone using her traveling spell, and Rowena looked up. Helga walked over and filled the hand that lay at her side with her own, making space with a gentle press of warm skin. Rowena looked at their hands, felt the tension leave her and knew that she could let go. Her hand would not be empty. The cornerstone was in place.  

Later in life, she would sit in the first hall, The Great Hall, with its ceiling seeming open and a thousand shining moments with her friend would come to mind, making the stars overhead seem cheap and small. She would wonder at the person that she might have been without Helga, if she’d have thought to build a school, if she’d have lived to see the need. She thought about the years ahead and balked at the idea that she must live them apart from Helga. Apart must surely be the falsest lie, she thought, a matchless betrayal by fate itself.  She’d suffered other betrayals by then and lived, but a future without her adoptive sister seemed too much to countenance after everything else. 

She soothed herself with the idea that maybe they were fated to end as they began. Perhaps she’d see her friend in the fall. She asked the stones what they thought but, though they still answered her from time to time, on this matter they were silent. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! Hope liked it but I look forward to hearing from you either way, chapters will be posted as i finish them so... every other week at the latest probably. for lols and curiousity, if you comment, what house would you be sorted into?


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